Sin City

What is Sin City?

A massive steel truss weighing about 180,000 pounds has been lifted into place at Durango Casino in southwest Las Vegas as construction reaches the halfway point of its $385 million expansion.

The huge structure, measuring nearly 140 feet long and 20 feet tall, was installed Friday, September 18, as part of the second expansion of Station Casinos’ Durango property.

Suffolk Construction, the project’s general contractor, used a crane weighing roughly 650,000 pounds for the lift, with a second crane assisting with the operation.

How to play Sin City

The prospect of international operators snapping up Japan’s coveted IR licences gradually lost its lustre, as the likes of Wynn Resorts, Las Vegas Sands, Genting Singapore and Caesars Entertainment balked at the demanding regulatory framework, hefty investment requirements and uncertain returns.

Although the late LVS chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson hailed the Japanese market as “a holy grail” and the “ultimate of business opportunities”, the company dropped out of the game, scrapping its pledged $10 billion project.

Japan has drawn on Singapore’s IR development model, which embodies a balancing act between ambitious economic visions and restrictive conditions. But Andrew Klebanow, principal of Klebanow Consulting, believes Japan’s IR regulations swerved “too far into crafting regulations and policies”. Klebanow specialises in hotel-casino market feasibility studies, strategic planning and facility planning recommendations.

How to play Sin City

Within several years, however, the partnership had soured.

In 2012, Sanum and Lao Holdings, an Aruba-based company created to hold the investors’ interests in Sanum, accused Laos of trying to force them out of the country after Savan Vegas had become successful.

They took the dispute to international arbitration, claiming Laos had violated investment treaties protecting their businesses.